The Absurd and the Almighty

The Green Stick by imanartichoke

I love theatre. I love Jesus. Unfortunately, the kind of theatre I love tends not to love Jesus.

Samuel Beckett, Eugene Ionesco, Harold Pinter; representatives of what is often known as the ‘Theatre of the Absurd’, an art-form regularly thought to be esoteric, avant-garde and thoroughly incomprehensible.[1] It is not uncommon to hear their work referred to as meaningless, inaccessible, or downright odd!

Yet, I love it. I love the wittiness, the poignancy, the manipulation of language. I adore the physicality, and the humour of confusion. I am stirred by the combination of rich layers of meaning against a bleak, minimalistic set. It makes me giggle like a child and shiver like an old man, though in truth I am neither.

I have heard it described as a godless and irredeemable genre. Yet, as a graduate of both drama and philosophy, I have found myself fascinated with its potential, and the conundrum it poses: how, as a playwright, might I explore the Absurd for the glory of God?

Defining the genre

‘Absurd’ can mean many things, from ridiculous to incongruous, but as applied to theatre it takes its definition from Albert Camus. In The Myth of Sisyphus, Camus writes: ‘A world that can be explained by reasoning, however faulty, is a familiar world. But in a universe that is suddenly deprived of illusions and of light, man feels a stranger. His is an irremediable exile, because he is deprived of memories of a lost homeland as much as he lacks the hope of a promised land to come. This divorce between man and his life, the actor and his setting, truly constitutes the feeling of Absurdity.’[2]

Martin Esslin, in his seminal work on the genre, comments that ‘Absurd’ originally means ‘out of harmony’, in a musical context. Hence its dictionary definition: ‘out of harmony with reason or propriety; incongruous, unreasonable, illogical.’[3] One of the key practitioners of the genre, Eugène Ionesco, writes, ‘Absurd is that which is devoid of purpose… cut off from his religious, metaphysical, and transcendental roots, man is lost: all his actions become senseless, absurd, useless.’[4]

Thus Absurd plays are typically marked by a combination of the following features; they may be menacing, apparently devoid of meaning, unstructured, depressing and seemingly incoherent. They are in a sense ‘anti-plays’, breaking many of the traditional elements of theatre-craft.

Esslin summarises, ‘If a good play must have a cleverly constructed story, these have no story or plot to speak of; if a good play is judged by subtlety of characterisation and motivation, these are often without recognisable characters and present the audience with almost mechanical puppets; if a good play has to have a fully explained theme, which is neatly exposed and finally solved, these often have neither a beginning nor an end; if a good play is to hold the mirror up to nature and portray the manners and mannerisms of the age in finely observed sketches, these seem often to be reflections of dreams and nightmares; if a good play relies on witty repartee and pointed dialogue, these often consist of incoherent babblings.’[5]

Each of these points stands at odds to the Christian worldview. Absurdism rejects the idea of a constructed plot; Christianity affirms that there is a meta-narrative to life. Absurdism depicts man as a mechanical puppet, controlled by malicious external forces; Christianity affords man dignity, being made in the image of the Almighty.[6] Absurdism promotes a cyclical view of time, with no beginning and no end, just mere repetitious monotony; Christianity affirms that God created time, works in history, and plans to bring the story to a climax in new creation.[7] Absurdism deals in menace and bleakness; Christianity promotes an optimistic view of life, with hope for those who believe in Christ. Absurdism devalues language through the use of (paradoxically well-crafted) incoherent babbling; Christianity upholds words as both the agent of God’s creation[8] and an apt description for the Son who took on flesh.[9]

In short, the worldviews espoused by Christian theology and Absurd theatre strongly contradict one another. For the Absurdist, we dwell in a bleak wasteland, cut off from all meaning and hope. We are born above a grave, ‘the light gleams an instant, then it’s night once more.’[10] We are simply waiting to die, and in the meantime we have nothing to do but endure our ‘metaphysical anguish’.

By contrast the Christian sees this as a good world, created by a good God. Life and creation have been marred as a result of our sin, but there is hope, for God has intervened in history providing a means for our forgiveness through a perfect sacrifice and a resurrection, guaranteeing that one day all of creation will be made new and death defeated.

The Absurd and the Almighty

So can a Christian promote a biblical worldview through the means of Absurd theatre? The answer, I believe, is yes… and no.

No – because the Absurd worldview is so antithetical to that of the Bible, that the two cannot be correlated without compromise.

Yes – because in depicting a bleak existence, I believe the playwright can entice the viewer to long for something more; a world full of meaning, and life, and vitality, and dignity, and coherence, and narrative, and truth, and hope, and God.

When I watch Absurd theatre, rather than seeing it as a true depiction of the world, and resigning myself to its misery, I see it as a vivid depiction of a life without God. Ionesco got it right; ‘Cut off from his religious, metaphysical, and transcendental roots, man is lost.’[11] Or in the biblical language, we are sheep gone astray[12], dead in our sins[13], alienated[14] and walking in darkness.[15]

The downbeat, monotonous, hopelessness of the Absurd worldview; the clamouring for meaning, the feeling of disappointment and an inability to satiate your deepest needs through the things of the world, points to the simplest yet most profound of Christian truths: man needs God.

There is a great power in the Absurd tradition to provoke questions and yearnings for God. Esslin admits this, writing, ‘In expressing the tragic sense of loss at the disappearance of ultimate certainties the Theatre of the Absurd, by a strange paradox, is also a symptom of what probably comes nearest to being a genuine religious quest in our age: an effort, however timid and tentative, to sing, to laugh, to weep – and to growl – if not in praise of God… at least in search of a dimension of the Ineffable; an effort to make man aware of the ultimate realities of his condition, to instil in him again the lost sense of cosmic wonder and primeval anguish, to shock him out of existence that has become trite, mechanical, complacent, and deprived of the dignity that comes of awareness.’[16]

In other words, there is something about the Absurd that stirs the emotions of the viewer to long for the very things the genre denies; meaning, hope, God. Could we not harness this as an emotive apologetic for man’s need for God?

Donning the Mask and Adopting the Voice

Whilst running the risk of shameless self-promotion, allow me to ground this through the example of one of my plays, The Green Stick.

It is a play strongly earthed in the Absurd tradition, where two men of indeterminable age spend every waking hour of every day repeating the same meaningless actions; digging, reading, exfoliating, urinating, philosophising… The sun rises and falls. They read poetry from books, kept fresh in the fridge. A stick is thrown onto the stage, yet the dog never materialises. They ruminate on life, death and truth, but ultimately find no answers. They are cut off from the world. It has all the hallmarks of Beckett…

… and deliberately so, for in the writing I had taken the decision to don his mask and adopt his voice.

I had set out to evoke the atmosphere of Waiting for Godot, through a similar set, structure, tone, and themes. I deliberately crafted the play in such a way as to make people feel like they were watching Beckett and it thrilled me to hear someone enter the theatre, see the set and whisper ‘it looks like Godot.’ They got it.

As the play progresses, the characters espouse a postmodern, quasi-nihilistic worldview. Igor, the more stubborn of the characters becomes increasingly entrenched in his misery, whilst Luka becomes increasingly liberated, as he realises the shallowness of his philosophy, and begins to question its foundations.

The play ends without providing any explicit solution, but entices the viewer to long for a new, better way of life. It raises questions in their mind; is this really how I see the world? Meaningless and void? Is this the kind of world I want to live in? Is there an alternative? If there were, what would I be willing to give in order to embrace it?

Rather than simply laughing it off and resigning themselves to their fate, the viewer is given the opportunity to reconsider his worldview. By temporarily donning the mask of Absurdism, we can unmask its philosophy. By adopting its voice we can show its words to be hollow and self-refuting.

Absurdism and Scripture

I believe there is a huge potential for expounding biblical truth through Absurd theatre in such a way as to encourage people to long for salvation. A number of passages of Scripture come to mind that have a distinctly absurd tinge to them. Take, for example, the musings of Quoeleth in Ecclesiates. His famous lament, ‘Utterly meaningless! Everything is meaningless’[17] is at once reminiscent of the tone of Beckett, and looks forward to Jesus who ‘came to give life to the full.’[18] Job’s question, ‘can a man live, though he die?’ expresses both the futility of impending death, and prophetically anticipates the one who will crush death underfoot.[19] The rich man crying out across the chasm to Lazarus evokes a sense of frustration at the inability to communicate, a prevalent theme in the Absurd tradition.[20]

Ionesco may have been closer to the mark than he realised when he wrote that, ‘The value of a play like Beckett’s Endgame… lies in its being nearer to the Book of Job than to the boulevard theatre or the chansonniers. That work has found again, across the gulf of time, across the ephemeral phenomena of history, a less ephemeral archetypal situation, a primordial subject from which all others spring… The youngest, the most recent works of art will be recognised by, and will speak to, all epochs. Yes, it is King Solomon who is the leader of the movement I follow; and Job, that contemporary of Beckett.’[21]

Conclusion

Absurdism in itself portrays a worldview that strongly contradicts that of the Christian faith, but properly harnessed can provide a powerfully evocative apologetic for God; causing the viewer to beg, plead, long and search for a world different to the desolate wasteland depicted before them.

Rather than being a godless and irredeemable genre, in the hands of a proficient and thoughtful writer, I believe the Absurd can cause us to look with sadness at the futility of a life without God, and then upward with longing, dreaming of a better world. And as we do so, we find, to our surprise, the very world we hoped for is promised in the pages of Scripture, and attained for us through Christ.

[1] Absurdism is not necessarily as inaccessible as it may seem. Although it was at its height in the 1940s-60s, its influence can be still seen in many modern art-forms, and it has its roots in many older, traditional theatrical forms. See chapters 7-9 of Martin Esslin’s The Theatre of the Absurd which explore its origins in the commedia dell’arte, clowning, thirteenth century nonsense poetry, and the works of William Shakespeare.
[2] Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus, p18
[3] Martin Esslin, The Theatre of the Absurd, p23
[4] Eugène Ionesco, ‘Dans les armes de la ville’, Cahiers de la Compagnie Madeleine Renaud-Jean-Louis Barrault, Paris, no.20, October 1957
[5] Esslin, p21-22
[6] Genesis 1:26
[7] Romans 8:19-25
[8] Genesis 1:3
[9] John 1:1-2, 14
[10] Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot.
[11] Eugène Ionesco, ‘Dans les armes de la ville’, Cahiers de la Compagnie Madeleine Renaud-Jean-Lous Barrault, Paris, no.20, October 1957, italics mine
[12] Isaiah 53:6
[13] Ephesians 2:1
[14] Colossians 1:21
[15] John 3:19
[16] Esslin, p400
[17] Ecclesiastes 1:2
[18] John 10:10
[19] Job 14:14, 1 Corinthians 15:25-26
[20] Luke 16:19-31. See for example Happy Days by Samuel Beckett or The Bald Prima Donna by Eugène Ionesco.
[21] Eugène Ionesco, ‘Lorsque j’écris’, Cahiers des Saisons, Paris, no.15, Winter 1959

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What do you think about this article?

Sam Roake – Saturday 20 Mar 2010

Great article Liam. I enjoy reading Sartre partly for similar reasons to yours - his existentialism develops atheism to its honest and logical conclusion.

Liam Thatcher – Monday 22 Mar 2010

Tim – We did a Q&A session after the performance, which opened up some interesting questions. A lot of it focussed on the writing process, my influences as a performer, etc. But some people did ask about the underlying philosophies of the play, and a number of friends told me it had sparked discussions/debates/philosophical-fist-fights in the bar afterwards! Certainly a couple of people got very angry at having their worldview undermined, and enthusiastically told me as much!! A real highlight was seeing an old chap in tears because it had made him rethink a lot of preconceptions he had about life, truth and faith – he has since been to church a few times… time will tell…

I am writing profusely in my spare time and have a number of projects on the go: I’m reworking a one man show I wrote quite some time ago, updating a classic play from 1913, and have just finished the first draft of a new play on Wittgenstein, Chess and human arrogance. How and when they will see the light of day remains to be seen.

Paul – Thank you. I think you’re right. Art has a potential to engage the heart as well as the head, and I think there is great power in being able to depict, before people’s very eyes, the natural outworking of their philosophy. I think of Nathan’s declaration to David – ‘Thou art the man!’ (2 Sam 12) – the parable hits home at the moment when you discover yourself in the picture, and dislike what you see!

Hugh – Thanks for your comment. I do, in principle, agree with you: We need both approaches. The struggle we will face will be in producing something that embodies the Christian worldview in such a way as to still provoke a substantial challenge to existentialism, relativism, surrealism etc. Often it is difficult to fully appreciate a piece of theatre until you are able to agree with, or enter into, the worldview being portrayed. My fear is that if we present people with a realised Christian worldview on a stage, they will fall at the first hurdle because the Christian worldview is so antithetical to their own. So my approach is to attack from the inside out…

Having said that, countless theatregoers happily seek escapism by watching pieces that clearly are unrealistic, and not grounded in any recognisable worldview. We don’t need to believe in a Phantom, Wizard of Oz or pack of singing lions to enjoy the latest west end shows… But if we want our art to be anything more than mindless escapism, it helps to be able to engage people on a philosophical level to which they can relate.   

So in short – I think we need to be doing both: engaging with people on their own terms, and presenting good, biblical wholesome art. Mine is, most certainly, not the only way.

David Sorley – Tuesday 30 Mar 2010

‘how, as a playwright, might I explore the Absurd for the glory of God?’

If ‘absurd’ only means ‘out of harmony’ then to quote the World War 2 poster… ‘keep Calm, and Carry on’.

Often as Christians we are so concerned about alienating people that we end up trying to present The most important truth people will ever here (the gospel message) into a Rom-Com, straight narrative format.

The absurdist genre will be redeemed by your absurdist plays Liam.

Liam Thatcher – Wednesday 31 Mar 2010

Paul - That is a brilliant way of putting it! Thank you.

And thank you Mr Sorley for your vote of confidence!